New & Used

What Reviewers Are Saying

Americans probably now know Raphael best as the author of The Glittering Prizes, in both television and book forms - and this collection of clever but rather overdone stories (most told in nearly-all-dialogue) frequently recycles the Prizes preoccupations: fame, envy, the hollow ring of witty, cultured, Oxbridge-accented success. "The Best of Friends" are a small-time publisher and a famous academic - old pals and duelists in verbal one-upmanship who haven't spoken in ten years (because the academic was a no-show at the publisher's dinner party) but now meet again, wrangling more viciously than ever. . . with sublimated homosexual feelings rising to the surface. In "The Muse," a famous comic writer (whose delivery is the same as Adam's in Prizes) channels his deeper rages into a cartoony literary alter-ego - until a tough, liberated lady bullies him into adultery and honesty. And in the title story, two brothers are amusingly (if much too neatly) contrasted: bright, cultured, handsome Victor rises in government/academia. . . while oafish, provincial Pip stumbles along, marries poorly, but eventually becomes a paperback-pulp millionaire (the creator of Randy O'Toole, who "made James Bond seem like a character in Henry James") and exchanges wives with Victor. In other stories too, away from Oxbridge, the effects are far from subtle. There are ironic parables (show-biz folks trying to settle in the too-provincial country); rather clinical bits of pathological behavior (a young lesbian model breaking into movies via heterosexuality, a homosexual finding true love with a woman who unfortunately needs cruelty from a lover); and send-ups of crass Americans abroad. "On the Black List," however, though equally simplistic, is finely done - as an American painter who didn't really suffer from his 1950s blacklisting (he was in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) finds a more painful, personal form of blacklisting years later. . . in Spain. And, throughout, admirers of The Glittering Prizes will find enough chunks of that whiplash repartee (better spoken than read) to make this a source of mild, intermittent entertainment. (Kirkus Reviews)

General

Books

Members

Affiliates

Cookies are disabled, please note some site features may not function correctly.

We store cookies on your computer when you visit BOOKS etc. to support site features like logging in and remembering your basket items etc. We may also use cookies to better understand how our site is being used so it can be improved.
We allow third parties to store cookies in order to better understand traffic patterns and user habits,
collected statistics are general and do not include personal identity or personal information. Our privacy policy.